by giving and hosting presentations to adult, professional and young learners;

by creating educational opportunities and events for the public that
explore and celebrate topics within our four focus areas.

Our History

MusEco Media and Education Project was officially “born” on August 19, 2003 when we filed our non-profit corporation paperwork with the state. Federal non-profit status was officially granted by the United States Internal Revenue Service in May, 2004.

Since that time, Kris and Scott have frequently been asked to explain just exactly why they formed MusEco, so here is a brief explanation.

MusEco was formed for several reasons, but the most important one is that our region lacks a non-partisan, non-advocacy, non-profit organization that focuses specifically on educating the public on environment, music, visual arts and Native American issues – especially as they intersect. Our work is about education – delivering information to the public utilizing the most innovative, appropriate and effective vehicles available to do so. Providing the public with information on our four focus areas enhances our local and regional communities by giving people what they need to fully participate in our democracy.

Because of the combination of our skills, our educational background and our experience, we felt strongly that we possessed the tools to create an organization capable of delivering high-quality information to the public while running an efficient and opportunity-oriented operation.

We look forward to being able to fill needs in our community and region with MusEco’s work.

Name and Logo

It was a hot, sunny, summer day in Big Sky in mid-July, 2003 when the brilliant idea for the name hit Scott.

The name didn’t come out of nowhere, though—it was the long-hoped-for result of several brainstorming sessions between Kris and Scott. After the name came to Scott, Kris added the tag (Media and Education Project).

As may already be obvious, “MusEco” is a combination of Music and Ecology. The name is pronounced myew-ZEE-co (like, music and ecology!)

In the weeks that followed, Kris and Scott worked together to come up with the logo. Kris sketched out a number of ideas that included musical notes, staffs, water, the Greek letter theta (often used as an earth symbol), pine trees, and leaves. As Scott drew out some of the ideas he eliminated some of the design elements and consolidated others, resulting in the logo that you see branding all our materials.